I am working on a scene from Jenny's past, prior to Border Worlds, when she was a college student on earth, and when she earned money as an artist's model for drawing classes (you didn't know that, did you? I didn't either). The scene began as a tiny page thumbnail in my sketchbook, and I have been working it out at a larger size with tracing paper. In this case I am not working from a script, and am learning about the character as I explore this period in her life. More to come.

This is the original thumbnail sketch, about 3 inches wide, made within the last year.

This the development of that thumbnail, blown up to about 11 inches wide, and elaborated in blue and graphite pencil on canary yellow tracing paper, the kind once prevalent in the drafting industry, but which I have gravitated to for some reason.

Here is the second part.

Here are some separate explorations in blue, graphite, and Uni-Ball, wherein I am attempting to find the right age, expression, and attitude of the character. In this scene, Jenny is supposed to be in her early 20s, whereas in the Border Worlds series she was in her late twenties. Not much of a difference, but significant. The top left head has the right balance of youth and inexperience; the bottom right she is a bit too old. I want to get the sense that she is young but tired from all her activities and burning the candle from both ends (she is also on an athletic scholarship).

Sunday, July 7, 2013

At the end of Border
Worlds: Marooned (1990), Jenny Woodlore had made her way by jetpack to the
penthouse abode of Dr. Oliver Beecher, only to find Sparky the robot with the
message that the good doctor had already evacuated Chrysalis, the domed city. A
scene was subsequently sketched out and partially finished realized as finished
artwork in the 1990s, reconstructed her from extant materials. In it, Sparky
plays a recording made by Beecher for Jenny on a Contraptoid-like robot,
informing her that the space station is on a collision course with a
neighboring planet.

Jenny, already exhausted from her climb out of the bowels
of the space station, and devastated by the arrest of Drasin and Cody and the loss
of the hotrod, straps her jetpack back on to leave the penthouse. Her depleted fuel
supply is used up before she can land in the park below, and she freefalls
through the trees, protected only by her space suit. Crashing to the ground,
she is assisted by onlookers, and staggers to her feet only to collapse again
in a fountain. After she revives, she makes her way to a tramway that takes her
back to the hangar on the outskirts of the plate of the space station. Removing
her space suit, she collapses in tears in the shower, and finally passes out,
nude, on her bed. The conclusion of this sequence marks the approximate halfway
point of the story material planned for Border
Worlds.

Below are several sheets of chisel-point marker sketches
from the same sketchbook. The appearance of the Meddler and Rory Smash on one
of them date these to around the time I was working on Bizarre Heroes, and particular the final issue (#0), when I was
contemplating a time-travel crossover.

About Don Simpson

Don Simpson is the cartoonist-creator of the comic books Megaton Man™, Border Worlds™, and Bizarre Heroes™. Don also illustrated Al Franken's 2003 bestseller Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Don has taught workshops in cartooning and figure drawing for a number of years, and earned a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in History of Art and Architecture in 2013.

Original and commissioned artwork by Don Simpson is available for purchase. Inquiries are welcome.